Work Songs Quotes

“Given this long and murky lineage, any inquiry into the origin of hunting songs is tantamount to a search for the birth of music itself.”
― Ted Gioia, Work Songs

“As M. I. Finley11 points out with regard to ancient Greece, it was a culture that reached the pinnacle of artistic achievement, yet totally lacked museums: “Art was meshed in with daily living, not set apart for occasional leisure time or for the enjoyment of rich collectors and aesthetes.” In contrast, musical performance for the purpose of mere entertainment was seen by the ancients not simply as a lesser art but in fact as a low art. Tacitus, for example, describes as a “national disgrace” 11 the emperor Nero’s desire to perform music on a public stage. In fact, the “connectedness principle” is not very far from Aristotle’s 11 ancient view of the complicated, various roles of music, which included alleviating toils and pains, providing refreshment, strengthening the soul, firming the character, and—yes, but almost as an afterthought—also offering entertainment. If we have forgotten all but the last of these roles in our media-dominated commercial culture, we need do nothing more than listen with open ears to the pathos and intrinsic dignity of the work song to be called back to this richer view of the role of music.”
― Ted Gioia, Work Songs